Renegade Game Studios Takes Over World of Darkness

Renegade Game Studio is taking over the World of Darkness! They will be publishing books produced in-house by owner Paradox, starting in December with the free (digital) Vampire: The Masquerade Companion, which has rules for playing humans and ghouls, as well as the clans Tzimisce, Ravnos, and Salubri.

Modiphius took over the line in December 2018; there's no mention of whether that is continuing. Renegade Game Studios, which brought us Kids on Bikes, recently announced that it was producing D&D 5E-powered lines for various Hasbro properties, including Power Rangers, and possibly Transformers, G.I. Joe, and My Little Pony.

The new World of Darkness books are to be produced in-house at Paradox, under the leadership of Justin Achilli, from White Wolf. They won't only be making RPGs -- they're also creating video games, comics, and more.

The Vampire Companion is coming free in December.

The Vampire: The Masquerade Companion book brings three highly-anticipated Vampire clans into V5, and gives Storytellers more tools to enhance their chronicles, including:

• Three vampire clans: Tzimisce, Ravnos, Salubri
• Discipline powers representing each of the new clans
• Expanded rules and roleplaying information for ghouls and mortals
• Details on each clan’s view on vampire coteries
• New Merits for players characters
• Rules errata to Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition

 

[WisdomOfWombats]

Can they please abandon the cheap and badly 'shopped fashion magazine look full of what look like actual cosplayers (?), and get back to a more appropriate, traditional and readable and usable design aesthetic? Yeah, that would be great. (The look of v5 played a rather significant part in me skipping the 5th edition of the game entirely.)

And here I was looking at V5 and going: finally the artwork in the game book looks like the artwork I bring to the table

 

[opacitizen]

And here I was looking at V5 and going: finally the artwork in the game book looks like the artwork I bring to the table

…aaaand I've just realized that I definitely should've added that YMMV (of course.)

 

[imagineGod]

I am not a fan of The World of Darkness but would still be grateful if someone with knowledge of the brand can explain who actually owns the Intellectual Property in its spiderweb of ownership.

Is it Onyx Path, or Paradox, or Modiphius or this new Renegade Game Studios?

 

[RAdeMorris]

I am not a fan of The World of Darkness but would still be grateful if someone with knowledge of the brand can explain who actually owns the Intellectual Property in its spiderweb of ownership.

Is it Onyx Path, or Paradox, or Modiphius or this new Renegade Game Studios?

Paradox Interactive owns the World of Darkness brand and all of its subbrands (e.g.: Vampire the Masquerade).

 

[stadi]

Did maybe Modiphius send in a 2d20 manuscript for Player's Guide instead of the expected V5 one?

 

[stadi]

I really like the V5 art direction so I'm happy with that generally. What I don't like is the layout and that the book is not logical. Some important things are at seemingly random places. There is one thing I don't like about the art and that is the Brujah. I hope they will stop portraying them as gang members all the time. They could be so much more. Why not make them modern warrior-philosophers? I don't know how warrior-philosophers look like, but definitely not like a mexican gang.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

I really like the V5 art direction so I'm happy with that generally. What I don't like is the layout and that the book is not logical. Some important things are at seemingly random places. There is one thing I don't like about the art and that is the Brujah. I hope they will stop portraying them as gang members all the time. They could be so much more. Why not make them modern warrior-philosophers? I don't know how warrior-philosophers look like, but definitely not like a mexican gang.

Now, bear in mind I haven't played Vampire in quite a while, but the Brujah if I recall right were set up to be both the warrior-philosophers as well as the basic rage-filled gang members. I think it was part of their curse, post- Carthage, but I agree - if they're only showing one and not the other, that should be fixed

 

[TrippyHippy]

Modiphius took over the line in December 2018; there's no mention of whether that is continuing.

It is implied that they aren’t, considering that the content of the Vampire Companion book was mooted to be in Modiphius’ Vampire's Player’s Handbook which never materialized. It doesn’t appear that Modiphius is writing new material for Vampire.

Maybe Modiphius will continue to distribute?

Justin Achilli’s experience of directing Vampire development will be valuable, although it does seem a bit disjointed to have multiple companies running different sub-lines for the WoD. Seems odd that the supplements seem to add up the Clans to 14 rather than 13 (with Banu Haqim, The Ministry, Lasombra, Hecata already added in supplements, along with Ravnos, Tzimisce and Salubri Clans in Companion along with the seven in the core).

 

[stadi]

Now, bear in mind I haven't played Vampire in quite a while, but the Brujah if I recall right were set up to be both the warrior-philosophers as well as the basic rage-filled gang members. I think it was part of their curse, post- Carthage, but I agree - if they're only showing one and not the other, that should be fixed

Yeah, I would be happy if they would also show the philosophers. Even better would be showing the rage filled rabble as something else. They could be a group of MMA fighters or wrestlers. They could be a group of mercenaries who do it for the fight and not the money. There are probably a lot of other options they could come up with.

 

[Abstruse]

I am not a fan of The World of Darkness but would still be grateful if someone with knowledge of the brand can explain who actually owns the Intellectual Property in its spiderweb of ownership.

Is it Onyx Path, or Paradox, or Modiphius or this new Renegade Game Studios?

So there's a bit of history going on here and before I start, there's one key thing to understand: The market for video games is at least an order of magnitude or two larger than the RPG industry. Smaller RPG companies think in the tens/hundreds of thousands. Larger ones think in the millions. Video game companies think in the billions.

So White Wolf was founded in 1991 and sold (or merged depending on who you ask) with video game company CCP (an Icelandic company best known for Eve Online). They began work on an ambitious World of Darkness MMO using the Eve Online model (as in players could amass political power to become Prince of the city and make laws that would govern the other players, could be overthrown, etc.) During this time, CCP produced a few World of Darkness books in-house before licensing the brands to Onyx Path Publishing for the tabletop games and By Night Studios for the LARPs. Onyx Path produced new material both for the original World of Darkness and the New World of Darkness (Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, etc.), which they rebranded to "Chronicles of Darkness" to prevent confusion after they started creating new material for the "Old World of Darkness".

In 2014, development on the MMO ended and, in 2015, the World of Darkness IP and the "White Wolf" name were sold to Paradox Interactive (a Swedish video game developer known for strategy games like Crusader Kings, Stellaris, and Cities: Skylines). Paradox then created a new publishing company and called it White Wolf (though it had no ties to the original White Wolf other than the name and IP). A lot of bad/weird/controversial things happened that I won't go into, but it ended up with their White Wolf company causing an international incident with the country of Chechnya and threats of criminal prosecution before Paradox dissolved the company. They then placed Modiphius in charge of the World of Darkness IP for tabletop roleplaying games. They started producing new editions of the V:TM 5e sourcebooks that caused the controversy. A license was also given to Hunters Entertainment to produce a fifth edition of Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Meanwhile through all this, Onyx Path Publishing and By Night Studios retained their licenses to create new products for World of Darkness including material for 5e.

And that brings us to today. With this announcement, the development of the World of Darkness tabletop roleplaying games is back in-house with Paradox Interactive, Renegade Game Studios will publish the books, and we're not sure of the status of the license deals with Modiphius, Onyx Path Publishing, Hunters Entertainment, and By Night Studios.